Christmas Eve Public Service Announcements

Three announcements. 

 

First, people… I just made these… 

That’s her picture.  I’m too lazy to take a picture and there’s no way these are still going to be around when it’s light in the morning – I am going to have to make a whole new batch. 

My method… I followed the recipe – with a couple tweaks --

1. Doubled the cinnamon mixture and doubled the butter, ended up using almost all of both.
2. Instead of combining the above, I cut up the cold butter and put chunks on each strip of dough, sprinkled on the the cinnamon mixture, and rolled each one individually, so they didn’t get smashed and turn oblong.
3. It is KEY to put on some frosting while they are hot; it drips down inside the roll, mixing with the cinnamon mixture and contributes much of the goo.  I doubled the frosting, too and put an extra dollop on top of each roll before devouring.

SOOOOO good.  Making more tomorrow morning.

 

Second, I took pictures of the kids, trying to copy this pin.  This is what we ended up with…

It took a lot of messing around to get there, but we had some fun and I got some shots I liked, especially the last two.

 

Finally,  I hope you all are having a good time with family and friends this holiday.  Be thankful for those blessings in our lives.  And realize how immensely huge Jesus’s journey to the Earth for His blessing of salvation is.  We saw Him portrayed in a documentary wearing the crown of thorns today.  A reminder which helps make apparent the depth of His love for us.  Mark and I had a good talk about it.  Not only did He suffer worldly persecution, pain and mocking.  But actually taking our sins upon Himself.  It is pretty unbelievable.  I can only will myself to believe it, I can’t actually imagine someone being selfless enough to take my sin upon their shoulders; but I know it to be true because the Bible tells us so.  Incredible.

 

That’s all I got.  So Merry Christmas to you and a Happy New Year!  And many blessings!

Resurrection Day

Well, this year I meant to stop calling it Easter and start calling it Resurrection Day, but I failed.  I did a lot of explaining to the kids what Resurrection Day is all about.  We made nests with eggs one day and I kept trying to trick them and tell them we made nests for Easter, and they would correct me that Easter was about Jesus rising from the tomb, but that nests were fun for springtime.  But the “Resurrection Day” switch did not happen this year. 

Well egg hunts are fun for spring too!  One year we did it in the snow (can’t find a post on that – I guess it was before I had this blog!).  Last year it was in our yard.  This year it was Grandma Debbie’s woods.  That was highly inconvenient for my photography, I might add… I had the telephoto lens on and ready to go, and then went outside and realized it was in the tiny little patch of  woods.  So not only could I not open up my aperture as much as my 35mm, but I also couldn’t zoom out far enough at times in the cramped woods.  Lesson learned: research the egg hunting environment and prepare accordingly before it is too late.

My camera issues certainly didn’t stop the kids from having loads of fun…

 

Oh yeah, and the sunlight wasn’t the “golden hour” I had envisioned.  The sun hadn’t quite set yet and the direct sunlight was super harsh, as seen above where half of Susie is lost! 

Mark and miss Morgan took off down a steep bank I wasn’t about to traverse in my dress and flip flops, so I followed Susie the other way.  She and her helper photographer found one egg in a tough hiding spot…

I was a good mom and helped her after snapping a few more photos of her struggling.

She kept right at it, finding more eggs others had rushed by…

Susie hunted until she was sure they were all found and then emerged from the woods victorious, purse full of goodies held proud.  Lucky we had that purse in the car; I always forget to bring baskets!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Grandma Debbie and my sister in law Shelby always have creative goodies inside their eggs.  From coins to candy to little oranges!  At our egg hunts in the snow at Grandma Sue’s we have always had some small toys in the eggs.  I love these ideas because I don’t love when my kids are on sugar highs!

Did you notice Susie’s egg hunting attire included these?

They were a gift from Leah, and I have been saving them until she fits them this summer when they won’t get ruined by our rainy and muddy weather.  They still don’t completely fit but they were a fun addition to her Resurrection Day outfit.  All the teenage girls at church were jealous!  =)

After a lovely meal and the egg hunt, the FIL (father in law) made us some excellent German Pancakes…

 

He sliced them up like pie and we added Bavarian Cream, strawberries and whipped cream… oh man!   I wolfed it down too fast to get a picture.

On the way home, we topped off the festivities with a random stop to take a picture with Tow Mater…

He was parked at a local tavern, and we had to go and check him out again.  I still don’t know if Mark believes this Mater is real.  We had to look inside and confirm that he does indeed have a steering wheel and a real human does have to drive him.  It’s a treat to have this work of art in our small town!

So is anyone else trying to call it Resurrection Day?  It’s kind of back to the whole “Happy Holidays” vs. “Merry Christmas” issue, but for me, it is silly to call it Easter (after a pagan God) which induces imagery of candy, chicks, eggs and passed out sugared up kids… at least for me it does.  Why not call it what it is supposed to be?  A day or rejoicing over the RESURRECTION of our Lord and Savior.  Because without that resurrection, He would NOT be my Lord and Savior.  He would be just like all the other religious leaders and teachers through time who have brought teaching for a time and then died.  Jesus died, yes, to sacrifice His perfect life to pay for our wretched ones, then rose from the tomb!  He is alive and will be active in your life, saving you from destruction, if you just “…declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”  Romans 10:9.

Godbless! 

valentines day craftiness

 

wow I have been pinning some valentines day crafts lately.  We only got around to making two of them.  I was taking the kids to a valentine’s party and we had to have each kid bring 12 valentines so we rounded up some supplies and got busy…

 

 

We let the madness dry overnight.  This morning we picked up where we left off.  The kids started writing “From:” and their names on the valentines, while I worked on the goodies for inside the bags…

  

I wanted to do heart shaped doilies for the little red hots packets, like these on pinterest, but all the stores were out of them.  We put the packets in the bags and tied them up with twine.  The bag in the last photo is the one I made, two simple hearts intwined.  Awww.  The kids went crazy with theirs – they were awesome – covered in hearts. 

For our other card, we did a simple little construction paper card, with a scrap of lace and a paper heart sewn on the front.  Inside, we glued this:

At that point there were no pictures, we were out the door!  See the red letters?  I always thought that was so clever.  Mark got a kick out of the fact that you could write “down” or “regular” which he “didn’t know before.”  =)

I also did a heart attack for the hubby.  I have seen cooler versions, but the one I did was just a bunch of construction paper hearts on our door, on each one I had written something I love about him.  I did it late last night after he fell asleep, so first thing this morning he went to hit the shower and saw the “heart attack.”  Next year, should I cover the lawn?

Do my pictures look super orange to you, or is it just me?  I get the white balance decent on my camera LCD, but then when I load them, they’re still orange.  That’s okay, I’m challenging myself to keep working on it and stick to SOOC (straight out of camera) here on the blog for at least another week – my paycheck on Monday will allow me to buy a new laptop!  I respect my hubby even more for saving all year to surprise me with the van – it took all the willpower I could muster to save a month and a half’s paychecks for the laptop!  =)  I feel like I am in a new clothing famine!  I guess that proves I was buying too many clothes with my paychecks.  =)

Anyway, I gotta go agonize over what to make for dinner.  What are you having???

my christmas surprise story

Update: sweet Nicole sent me pics!  See below!

I am finally sitting down to write the story of my surprise on Christmas Eve.
First you need a little background story.  This is how my husband handles surprises.  It is the story of our engagement in a nut shell… 

Hubby wants to go on a little hike. 
We drive to it. 
Road is snowed in, so little hike now = very long hike. 
I don’t want to go for womanly reasons, if you know what I mean. 
He pushes me to go. 
I say no. 
He says, “Fine, I’ll give you your ring some other time.” 

Horrible, right?  I know he just cannot keep surprises like that.  So I never expect them from him.  Well now he has proven me wrong, in a big way…

Christmas Eve morning we packed up and rushed out of the house to head to my folks’ in the mountains.  We had to stop for diapers and my hubby said we could go to Fred Meyer and go to Starbucks, which he calls “Fivebucks” and only justifies going there if it is a road trip, date or special occasion.  =)

First, I asked him to swing by my work so I could give them their Christmas card which also had a gift in it.  He asks, “Do we have to?”  “Yes,” I said, “it’s Christmas Eve; I don’t want to give it to them late when we get back.”  So he drove me there and said, “We’re just going to put it in the mailbox.”  I was like, “No, that is rude, plus they will see us on the surveillance cameras and be sad that we didn’t say ‘Hi’.”  That is when he stopped at the mailbox, very politely took the card envelopes from my hand, deposited them in the mailbox continued down the road.  Well, that was kind of rude, I thought.  I very consciously decided not to pick a fight about it.  We went on our way.

As we get close to Fred Meyer and Starbucks, he pulls out the Flip camera and asks me to clean it off because the lens is dirty.  I clean off the lens and give it back to him.  He tries to turn it on and sadly complains that the batteries are dead, “Oh man, I wanted to film you getting your Christmas present at your parents’ house.”  I’m thinking, then we will get new batteries there, why are you stressing out?

Then we round the corner to Starbucks.  I notice a van with excessive Christmas decorations on it, and before I am done processing that, Ty exclaims, “Who is that!?” and I see it is one of Ty’s friends, odd seeing him here Christmas eve, I think.  Until I realize what is even more odd: he is running across the street to a whole ‘gang’ which happens to be quite a few of our close friends and family, and as it dawns on me that I might be the target of some horrible –gasp- surprise that everyone but me knew about and will involve people staring at me for a prolonged period of time, which is my worst nightmare… I look back at that van and read the sign in the front window (I saved it and took a picture of it later so I could remember)…



…and start balling.  And proclaim over and over while crying that Ty is “so mean”.  And hide my face in my coat.  And tell Ty that I hate him.  And finally get out of the van and stand there crying while everyone stares at me.  They must have wondered if I didn’t like the van. 

When I was done making a fool of myself, self-consciously wiping my face and trying to check out the van while knowing everyone was staring at me, we all went into Starbucks and spent five bucks on a drink and visited for a while.  It was lovely, and I did kiss my husband and tell him I loved him and I loved the van and I did not, in fact, hate him, but never to surprise me again.  ;)

After it was done, hubby couldn’t believe I hated surprises, and said, “Would you really rather not had our friends there?”  I told him honestly, “If it was all about me, yes.  But you worked so hard for this surprise and wanted to share it, so I am glad they were there to share it with us.”  Plus many of them helped clean the van, hide it, make excuses for him while he detailed it and one of them brought it there for the surprise, so it was nice of him to include everyone.

And now I am cruisin’ the mom van in style…



It is 4 years newer than our Jetta and 7 years newer than my old van.  Everything was broken, and I do mean EVERYTHING, on the old van, so this one seems like a space ship compared to a wagon, seriously.  It is lovely and I feel super blessed and spoiled and still cannot believe that my hubby pulled off this huge surprise, saving all year, doing side jobs and lying telling me that he only made $100 in a whole weekend, and stashing the rest away for months and months!  I am blessed to have him taking care of me!

Thanks Nicole, for sending the pics, they're great!  =)

The End.

photo for grandma

 

I thought I would share the product of a seriously last minute photo shoot we did of all my mom’s grand kiddos…

My sister-in-law and I rounded up the kids on Friday before christmas and did the photo shoot in about 5 minutes in my pasture.  On christmas, after we opened presents, I showed mom on the computer – super ceremonious, huh?  But, we got the job done and brought a smile to grandma’s face!  I gave her a few different edited versions of my favorite shot, with and without the text. 

gift ideas { hop scotch mat }

 

This is one of the gifts I made for some little friends for christmas…

It’s a handmade hopscotch mat to provide hours of healthy, energy-burning play indoors…

It was super cheap and easy to make (I roughly used a tutorial I pinned on Pinterest).  For the mat, I bought a 4’ x 15’ canvas painters drop cloth from the hardware store for less than $10.  I drew out the hopscotch pattern using a sharpie and a ruler and a 1’ square template.  Then I cut off the excess length of mat and hemmed that edge.  Then I used fabric paint and a 5-cent sponge paint brush to paint on the numbers.  I made three little beanbags (there are three girls) for them to toss.  Done!

It was easy, is very healthy and great for moms when we can’t say “go outside!”  It has been used a few times already.  I imagine it would be a great gift for kids who live in apartments… or in the Pacific Northwest where even if you live on a couple acres, sometimes the rain makes it seem like you might as well live in an apartment since you never get to go outside!  Sorry…  Can you tell what the weather’s bee doing here???  Anyway, I had to share this sweet gift for any time of year, for less than ten bucks!